Sorry, tiger: Why we should save weird species first

With more than 4000 species on the brink of extinction and limited resources to help them, conservation needs to move beyond the cuteness factor

"ALL animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." The famously sanctimonious maxim from George Orwell's Animal Farm captures the current state of affairs in nature conservation quite well. Though conservationists are uncomfortable admitting that we might have to let some species go extinct, they also know that it is impractical to try to distribute their efforts evenly.

This makes prioritising inevitable. Every organisation involved in conservation does it, and they often focus on the same species – the cute and the colourful, the ones we feel emotionally drawn to. As a result, most mammal conservation projects target "charismatic" flagship species, leaving three-quarters of endangered mammals unprotected. Birds suffer a ...

To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.

To continue reading this article, log in or subscribe to New Scientist